wfn.org | Episcopalians: News Briefs

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

October 7, 2002

2002-227

Episcopalians: News Briefs

EDS' Lilly-funded program focuses on parishes in northern New 
England

(EDS) Episcopal Divinity School has been selected to receive a 
grant of $1,593,117 from the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment 
to participate in a national program called "Sustaining Pastoral 
Excellence." The EDS proposal calls for the development of a 
sustainable regional learning system that promotes excellence in 
Episcopal clergy in areas of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont 
in collaboration with the bishops of the three dioceses. 

"Our vision of ministry is one of pastors providing excellent 
care derived from their own spiritual depth, supported by those 
who share responsibility for ministry in their congregations, 
connected to other excellent pastors, and sustained by access to 
quality lifelong learning opportunities," said Bishop Steven 
Charleston, president and dean of EDS. "Our goal is to design 
and offer a system of supports and learning opportunities that 
will nurture, sustain, and deepen pastoral excellence among all 
ordained and selected lay leaders who are part of ministry teams 
in rural and regional ministries in Northern New England's 
Episcopal ministries.

"This program has been designed after extensive assessment with 
the Episcopal pastors in these communities. Working closely with 
them, we will accelerate the growth of local teams that will 
ground the ministry in even the most isolated communities. In 
cooperation with the Episcopal dioceses of Northern New England, 
we will use existing networks to weave a new fabric of mission 
support across this region," Charleston said.

At the same time, the seminary's training and resources will be 
made available to these communities through creative new models 
of information. This layered approach to strengthening regional 
mission will be thoroughly evaluated at the end of the project 
and offered as a blueprint for effective ministry that other 
dioceses throughout the United States and Canada can replicate.

The EDS award is for a five-year period.

"This project will unite the dioceses of Northern New England in 
a bold and unique partnership with a distinguished seminary of 
the Episcopal Church and will address urgent needs in support of 
innovative avenues for fostering and sustaining pastoral 
excellence in rural and regional ministry in our dioceses," said 
Bishop Chilton R. Knudsen of Maine. "We are poised to move 
forward in this endeavor, and are pleased the Lilly Endowment 
shares our enthusiasm for this unique partnership in service to 
the church of tomorrow."

Diane Stanton leads Uganda women's conference

(ENS) Thousands of women from throughout sub-Saharan Africa will 
gather in Kampala, Uganda in mid-October for a two-day Anglican 
women's conference led by Diane Stanton, the wife of Dallas 
Episcopal bishop James M. Stanton.

"Focusfest 2002" will include seminars, workshops, plays and 
songs of praise. The theme of the conference is "Leadership in 
Conflict." Stanton leads a team of women leaders from the Dallas 
diocese and five missionaries from the Houston-based Episcopal 
Medical Missionary Foundation.

"This is an evangelical festival for women from Uganda, Kenya, 
Rwanda, Zaire and beyond," said Mrs. Allen Ssekkade, the wife of 
Namirembe bishop Allen Ssekkade. "It's an opportunity for 
African women to get together to refocus their spiritual lives." 

Workshops include Forgiveness and Transformation, led by Dispute 
Mediation Services mediator Laura Allen: Rebuilding Broken Lives 
, led by UT-Southwestern Medical School professor Barbara 
Cambridge; Surrendering Ourselves to God, led by author and lay 
leader Dana Pope; Developing a Compassionate Heart, led by 
Dallas Episcopal urban ministries director the Rev. Diana Luck; 
and Developing a Missionary Heart, led by the EMMF team. Choir 
leader is Varita Michell. In addition to being the keynote 
speaker, Stanton will lead the conference's 18 delegate 
facilitators.

Prior to the conference, the group will visit a pygmy 
resettlement project in southwest Uganda that Diane Stanton 
began six years ago, when Batwa pygmies were forced from the 
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest homes by the Uganda government. The 
group will also visit Uganda Christian University. Stanton is 
also executive director of the Uganda Christian University 
Partners.

The Leadership in Conflict theme of FOCUSFEST 2002 is taken from 
2 Corinthians, which is based upon the apostle Paul's letter to 
the often-conflicted church in Corinth.

"Our African sisters and brothers face many difficulties," 
Stanton said. "We want them to know how much we support them and 
share in their suffering."

Official Anglican web portal launched by the Anglican 
Consultative Council

(ACNS) A major expansion of the Anglican Communion web site, 
published by the Anglican Communion Office in London, was 
announced in September at the 12th meeting of the Anglican 
Consultative Council. The web site will become the official 
Anglican web portal and be a comprehensive source for news, 
photos, information, and educational resources and have links to 
other official Anglican web sites around the world.

ACC members gave the news an enthusiastic endorsement. The 
new portal will be available soon at www.anglicancommunion.org 
and is expected to improve the way information about the life 
and work of Anglicans is accessed on the worldwide web. Members 
and leaders in the church, the public and the media will be able 
to use the portal to locate or request information about the 
worldwide Anglican Communion and its 38 primarily national 
provinces with 70 million members.

Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who presided at the 
portal launch, was praised and thanked by the Rev. Oge Beauvoir 
of Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York, as a model for 
Anglican leaders by the way he has used email and the web to 
stay in touch with issues and colleagues during his extensive 
travel and global ministry. Beauvoir said, "He has been a model 
by his avid and even experimental use of the internet as a tool 
for research and intercommunication in his own ministry."

James Rosenthal, director of communications for the Anglican 
Communion, said, "The web portal will allow us to provide much 
more than web pages. It will be the hub of a computer networking 
system on the internet that will offer online collaboration 
tools for church related committees and staff; private email 
based discussion groups for bishops and other leaders; and an 
enlarged online shop for books and materials about the life and 
mission of Anglicans."

This telecommunications initiative is being funded by a two 
year grant from the Parish of Trinity Church, Wall Street, New 
York City, in response to requests and consultations from and 
with web specialists and communication officers from Anglican 
provinces and dioceses, many of whom already are developing web 
sites in their parts of the world. They have cited the need for 
a coordinated and comprehensive web portal to represent and 
serve the Anglican Communion.

The Rev. Clement W. K. Lee from the Office of Communication 
in the Episcopal Church USA, and an adjunct staff member of the 
Anglican Communion Office, is convener of the working group 
developing the new portal. The group, doing most of its work 
online, includes Rosenthal and Christopher Took, from the 
Anglican Communion Office, the Rev. Joan Butler Ford  
(California), Dr. Dennis Johnson (Washington, DC), Tom Lopez 
(New Mexico), John Allen (New York), the Rev. Emmanuel Adekola 
(Abuja, Nigeria), and the Rev. Peter Moore (Gilgandra, 
Australia).

Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs in India march against 
religious hatred 

(ENI) Christians leaders in New Delhi joined their Hindu, Sikh 
and Muslim counterparts in a peace march against the spread of 
hatred in the name of religion.

Church of North India Bishop Karam Masih and Roman Catholic 
Archbishop Vincent Concessao joined prominent national leaders 
for the final stretch of the five-day march which ended at Raj 
Ghat, the Mahatma Gandhi memorial, on October 2, a national 
holiday commemorating Gandhi's birthday.

Christian school children were among hundreds from schools in 
Delhi who walked a few kilometers carrying placards saying "Shed 
hatred" and "Let's keep Gandhi alive." Several dozen peace 
activists, a majority of them Hindu, marched the length of the 
700-kilometer route, starting on September 27 near Ayodhya, a 
Hindu holy town. The march ended at the sacred flame at Raj 
Ghat, the spot where Gandhi was cremated.

Church of North India pastor Valson Thampu, one of the march 
organizers, told ENI: "At a time when the merchants of [ethnic 
hatred] are trying to divide the nation and polarize [religious] 
groups, our message is let us unite and not divide people in the 
name of God." The exploitation of religious sentiments for 
political gain, Thampu said, was "one of the greatest evils 
faced by Indian society now. That is why we decided to carry out 
this march." Thampu lamented, however, that the government of 
the state of Uttar Pradesh had refused permission to begin the 
march from Ayodhya itself--a town that had become a "symbol of 
the misuse of religion for divisive purposes" in recent years. 

Thampu was referring to the meteoric rise of the ruling 
pro-Hindu BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) over the past decade 
after a massive campaign to build a large Hindu temple at a 
disputed religious site in the town of Ayodhya. That campaign 
culminated in the razing of a 16th-century Muslim mosque at the 
Ayodhya site in 1992 by Hindu zealots, who claimed it had been 
built after demolishing a Hindu temple on the site, believed to 
be the spot where Hindu deity Ram was born. The razing of the 
mosque led to nation-wide riots between Hindus and Muslims that 
left several thousands dead. 

Trinity Commons to serve as spiritual center for downtown 
Cleveland

(ENS) A two-year, $9.8 million project to restore the campus 
of Cleveland's Trinity Cathedral and create an environmentally 
friendly spiritual, cultural and community oasis for downtown 
Cleveland is nearing completion. Trinity Commons, located at 
Euclid Avenue and East 22nd Street, will be dedicated November 8 
as part of the 186th Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese 
of Ohio.

"We envision this landmark facility as a resource to be 
shared by everyone in the community," said Bishop J. Clark Grew 
II of Ohio. "Trinity Commons is more than a restoration and 
modernization of Trinity Cathedral's campus, although that part 
of the project was desperately needed. It also will serve as a 
vibrant center for cultural and artistic events as well as a 
comfortable gathering place for downtown Cleveland, the 
Quadrangle community and the nearby student population."

A joint venture of Trinity Cathedral and the Diocese of Ohio, 
Trinity Commons combines 56,000 square feet of renovated space 
in the Cathedral Hall, Parish House and diocesan Church House 
(the historic former Rorimer Brooks  building) with 11,000 
square feet of new construction. It includes meeting rooms, 
classrooms, offices, a youth hostel, an art gallery, green space 
and retail space. Cafe Ah-Roma, a privately owned coffee shop, 
and Sacred Path Books and Art, a diocese-run bookstore, will 
occupy storefronts facing Euclid Avenue.

The project was designed to preserve the architectural and 
historic quality of the cathedral while modernizing the building 
and enhancing the use of the surrounding property. The facility 
will be accessible to people with disabilities and will offer 
state-of-the-art audio-visual communications technology, 
including capabilities for distance learning and sharing of 
information with remote locations throughout the diocese.

PBS documentary tells tale of troubled Liberia

(PBS) Two hundred years after the first Africans were 
transported to America against their will, their descendants 
sailed back to the land of their ancestors. Soon, thousands of 
freeborn blacks and former slaves settled on Africa's west 
coast, in the land that would become Liberia--named for the 
"liberty" they so dearly sought. 

Liberia's growth from a "colony," with a coastline barely 600 
miles long, to a modern state was not without challenges, but 
nothing prepared Liberians for the country's devastating civil 
war that began on Christmas Eve, 1989, and lasted seven long 
years. 

The untold story of America's African progeny is presented in 
"Liberia: America's Stepchild," premiering on PBS Thursday, 
October 10, 2002. This dramatic documentary follows the parallel 
stories of America's relationship with the African republic of 
Liberia--founded and backed by the American Colonization Society 
and the US government as a home for freeborn blacks and former 
slaves--and the settlers' relationship with the indigenous 
people.

Looking through the eyes of Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku 
Bright, the film also explores the causes of the turmoil that 
has ravaged Liberia since 1980. "Today people generally think of 
Liberia as a disaster, but it was not always so. Liberia was a 
founding member of the United Nations and one of the key 
initiators of the Organization of African Unity. It was the only 
black republic in the sea of colonial Africa and it made the 
colonizers very uncomfortable and the Africans very proud," says 
Bright. 

"Many of the events that occur in Liberia happen partly 
because people simply don't know their own history, and, in that 
vacuum, history can be terribly manipulated," said Bright. "I 
would still like to believe that human beings can, if they 
understand the nuances of their own histories, learn not to 
repeat the destructive lessons of the past. I also hope that 
this film can show us how tragedies unfold when there is no 
political will to do the right thing, either from leaders or 
from those who they believe to be their allies." 

The Liberian story begins in the early 1820s, when the 
Washington, DC-based American Colonization Society endeavored to 
send free blacks to Africa. The society's purpose was twofold: 
to reduce the possibility that free blacks might induce slaves 
to revolt against their oppressors, and to spread Christianity 
and "civilization" to the "black continent." 

The documentary retells the early story of Liberia, including 
its early struggles with disease; eradicating slavery on its own 
shores; warring indigenous tribes; its evolution as Africa's 
first independent republic; and the nurturing of its 
international diplomatic relations, particularly with the United 
States. One hundred and fifty years later, Liberians were 
divided into two distinct groups--the often-privileged American 
descendants, known as "Americo-Liberians," and the indigenous 
population. It was a division that would lead to political 
unrest, and ultimately, sow the seeds of war.

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